Contributing to Communities

In fiscal year 2010, we gave $5.7 million in cash and in-kind donations toward efforts in communities where our employees live and efforts that help alleviate hunger.

Click here to show related graph.

Community Involvement Examples:

• In 2010, Jennie-O Turkey Store raised more than $137,000 in company and employee contributions for the United Way of Greater Minnesota, which is headquartered in Willmar, MN.
• Hormel Foods contributed 18,000 cans of SPAM® classic and 18,000 cans of Hormel® chili to the Minnesota Zoo display celebrating its 10-year anniversary of the Wells Fargo Family Farm. At the end of the display in October 2010, the cans of food were donated to Second Harvest Heartland, a member of Feeding America and the Upper Midwest’s largest hunger-relief organization.
• Hormel Foods donated 50 cases of Hormel® Petite Turkey Breasts to the Paul Hall Chicago Boy and Girls Club to feed families during the holidays in December 2010.
• Jennie-O Turkey Store donated $15,000 to the Willmar Grow Mobile, a program of the local United Way, which takes a renovated camper out into the low-income neighborhoods and to day care centers to provide early childhood programming in locations where needed.

• Jennie-O Turkey Store contributed nearly $25,000 to local schools and libraries to support reading programs and to buy books and computers.

Disaster Relief

In 2010, some of our communities were hit with tornadoes and flooding that destroyed homes and caused people in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa to evacuate. In one such community, the small town of Wadena in west central Minnesota, the tornado ripped through town on June 17th, destroying 234 homes and the high school and heavily damaging other homes, the county fairgrounds and the community center. Close to 4,000 volunteers converged between June 25th and 28th to help Wadena residents. To assist in feeding the volunteers, Jennie-O Turkey Store donated nearly 500 pounds of sliced turkey and turkey roasts. The product was shipped to Mason Brothers, a local wholesale grocery company in Wadena, for storage and preparation. Due to a strong team effort and commitment to communities, the product was in Wadena within six hours from when Jennie-O Turkey Store started coordinating the donation on June 24th.

Community Infrastructure

High speed networks and economic development are intrinsically connected. The Google Fiber network is a project that aims to build and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. As a result, Hormel Foods joined a community group effort to encourage Google to test its Google Fiber ultra-high-speed broadband network in Austin, MN. Hormel Foods understands the value of technology in connecting it to the rest of the world. While Austin ranked sixth in this race for securing the town as a site for the Google Fiber project, we will continue to support innovative projects that will benefit our communities. For more information, please click here for the Austin, MN We Gig It site.